WHERE EAGLES SOAR

PALMER — Zachary and Spencer Bloom have a healthy sibling rivalry.

Spencer, the elder brother at 17, is a competitive swimmer, third-degree tae kwon do black belt and a local Geography Bee champion. Zachary, 14, also swims, is a third-degree tae kwon do black belt and a top Geography Bee competitor.

After Zachary finished a project in October, the brothers have another accomplishment in common — Eagle Scout.

Spencer earned his Eagle Dec. 17, 2009, at age 15 and Zachary was only 13 when he became an Eagle in October 2010, one of the youngest to earn the prestigious rank in the Boy Scouts of American, said father, Rick Bloom. Since then, Spencer has gone on to earn a Silver Palm, the highest honor any Eagle Scout can earn.

That’s one accomplishment he has over his younger brother — at least for now.

“I was in the military for 20 years and I saw a lot of generals and stuff,” Rick said. “That’s all great and all that, but the thing that always impressed me was an Eagle Scout, because you rarely saw any.”

Boy Scouting celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010, and of the estimated 100 million boys who have participated over the past century, only about 2 percent earn the rank of Eagle, Rick said.

For the brothers, Scouting has been a way to learn, excel and be competitive.

“Whenever he does something, I try to do it better,” said Zachary, an eighth-grader at Academy Charter School in Palmer. “That’s pretty much my goal.”

Spencer rolls his eyes.

“It’s getting to the point where he’s doing so much that if I try to push myself farther, it’s just going to stress me out,” he said. “I’m just trying to let it go now, it’s too hard to keep up with him.”

Although the rank of Eagle can be achieved with a minimum of 21 merit badges, Spencer has so far earned 40, while Zachary has 49. The goal now, the younger brother said, is to earn all 125 merit badges offered.

“I heard from my friends that Eagle Scout’s a really big thing,” Zachary said. “Then, by Spencer making Eagle Scout, we sort-of had a bet, almost, that I wanted to make it before him, but that didn’t happen. So, I’m trying to make more merit badges than him.”

Although the friendly competition has proven motivational for both, Spencer said the weight of his accomplishment hit home during his award ceremony.

“I started to kind of feel it all hit me,” he said. “I started to well up a little bit with tears. It was a big thing. It made me appreciate it, at that point, all the hard work beforehand.”

Service projects

One of the most feared and respected challenges for would-be Eagle Scouts is the community service project. Scout leaders won’t pass anyone through without the individual planning and executing a project that helps his community.

Spencer, a junior at Palmer High School, secured donations of materials and labor to build new bicycle racks at PHS. Zachary built an information kiosk at Eklutna Tailrace for the state Department of Fish and Game.

“We go fishing there, so it’s a nice informational board we can see there,” Zachary said.

He looked through a number of suggested plans from Fish and Game and the city of Wasilla before deciding to build a solid board with a roof over it that “would last a long, long time.”

Spencer rides his bicycle to school and swim practice, and noticed the entire school population was using a single broken down, rusted rack to park their bikes.

“It started out just looking around the school for an idea,” he said. “And the first one was to extend the press box at the football field to make a nice little storage area. … Riding my bike a lot to school and to swimming, people were always tying their bikes up to the side and were all tangled up.”

What he learned is that “welding’s actually pretty darn hard,” Spencer said. “The guy who did this for us at Fence Emporium, he donated all the pipe for us and bent it. Honestly, I don’t think I would’ve finished it if it wasn’t for him.”

The result is the school has three new bicycle racks — and a lesson for Spencer this past summer that even a nice new rack can’t stop a thief if the bicycle’s not locked up.

“It was in the morning over the summer and I rode my bike to swimming, and I forgot my locks,” Spencer said. “So, I set it there and though that nothing’s going to happen. Wrong. It was a stupid thing to do.”

The school’s surveillance camera showed an indistinguishable figure taking Spencer’s bicycle from the rack he built. Don’t worry, later that summer he got his wheels back after spotting somebody riding his bicycle at Fred Myer.

“Yeah, I got it back,” he said. “The guy said he got it in the woods from somebody.”

In the end, both brothers said the project requirement is difficult, but necessary to earn an Eagle.

“It’s a good thing to make you more mature,” Spencer said. “You really have to work hard to finish a project and almost grow up a little bit.”

Zachary likes the challenge.

“I think it’s better to do something that’s challenging than it is to do something that’s easy and fast to complete.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.